Before we can become fairly conversant with English we need to go through a series of basic steps. One is knowing how to choose an appropriate length for our sentences. It is very easy to lose control of a sentence when it is too long or too complex to begin with. Starting small and learning to add to length and complexity yields better results in time. Secondly, we need to learn how to choose our words. The more intricate the words the more likely we are to get them wrong, tie our tongues in knots and lose complete control over meaning, pronunciation, tone of voice, pitch, etc. The more pompous we try to sound, the worse communicators we will be. Why say represents when we can use is, for instance ? Not only does it sound more English but it also respects a fundamental tenet of modern English which is that of clarity. There will be plenty of time for higher registers of vocabulary at a later stage. This here is a little exercise we did in writing and speaking to practice exactly that : trimming our sentences and replacing rattle words with their simpler, more to-the-point counterparts. But even so we were not perfect. Good speaking and writing are not exclusively talent-based. They are also practice-based. They require not just knowledge, but also confidence, attitude, self-control. After the first takes almost all the children asked to be allowed to do it again. In their words : I can do this better, teacher !. The words you will hear are theirs. Teacher input was minimal.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 22:11:06 +0000
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